


The Pale Man

by Nautilusopus



Series: The Number I [3]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Companion Piece, Gen, Horror, Imaginary Friends, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Statutory Rape, Pre-Nibelheim Incident, Teen Pregnancy, but actually dark comedy when you know the context, crisis core and dirge are not canon and can continue eating a dick, no betas here we die like men, part of The Number I, spooky scary, the creepy shit kids say, very very dark comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-22 00:02:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14925548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nautilusopus/pseuds/Nautilusopus
Summary: Some things are much harder to bury than others, as evidenced by the new friend Cloud claims to have made. Myrun doesn't care for him much.





	The Pale Man

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, you know how I posted Literally Just Chapter 18 Again and said "I'll come back to this I swear"? Didn't forget about that, I just procrastinated a whole bunch. 
> 
> Since I'm going to miss the actual one year anniversary of The Number I, happy one year anniversary two days early, I guess! This has been in the works for as long as the fic in question has, but as always I just kind of hung onto it for a while because I just... don't like how this turned out. And then I lost track of what I was doing. And then I remembered, but The Number I itself just kept going and I missed my window. But if I posted things I actually liked, I'd never post anything at all, so what the fuck ever. 
> 
> Here's a whole bunch of subtext that is no longer subtext.

It was always a bit of a shame Cloud wasn't like the other boys.

That wasn't to say there was anything _wrong_ with him, per se, but he didn't get along with any of the other children well. Myrun thought often of him growing up alone, but he didn't seem to have much interest in making friends, either. It would truly break her heart to see him grow up isolated and shunned the way she was now, but she really didn't know what else to do.

She'd expected difficulties. She certainly hadn't planned on having Cloud. She was barely managing to look after herself at the time, and couldn't imagine caring for another human. Still, broken contraceptives were much more difficult to deal with out in Nibelheim, with one doctor that seemed more intent on making sure everyone knew what she had done than anything else, and so seven months later at the age of sixteen she'd carried home a sickly, undersized infant with no idea how to raise it. At least, not without help. And definitely not without help she couldn't get on her own.

He'd need a name, she realised after a few days of indirectly referring to him as "the baby". His father hadn't cared enough to have any real input (and had wanted the boy even less than she had, initially). He seemed to hate what the baby represented -- that she'd made it to trap him here with her, in this small nothing of a town, after she had started getting a bit too old for his tastes. She'd given him one in Nibeli, her own dying tongue, about the sky and the way the light shown through the edges of the clouds preceding a summer storm. She'd began considering it at the five month mark, when she'd resigned herself to carrying it to term but didn't really have the means to perform an ultrasound. Good for boys or for girls. So it was no small annoyance when she found out that there didn't seem to be a word for that phenomenon specifically in Standard Continental. Cloud seemed a good enough substitute, at least, until she could teach him about the rest of the words that Shinra had buried one day when he was older. And when his father was no longer in the picture and Cloud was old enough to wonder about things like family names, her name became his: Cloud Strife. A child she was completely ill-equipped to raise in a house that was, at the very least, blessedly empty.

It was easier now that they were both older -- she felt a bit more confident at twenty-one about raising a child that would no longer potentially smother if she let him roll over, or simply freeze to death in the winter when she barely had enough food for herself and had stopped producing milk and didn't have the funds for baby formula. She managed to earn enough to scrape by cleaning, now that Cloud's father was gone, though it was hard to get work when the town regarded you as an irresponsible child at best, and an out-of-work prostitute at worst.

And then there were everyone's attitude towards her son.

"You ought to be disciplining him more," one of her clients once said. "He sits in the back of the room at school and stares at my son Argos. It's disturbing his learning."

"He's very aggressive," said another, before delicately (though it sounded more snide in Myrun's opinion) suggesting, "Perhaps he gets it from his father?"

"Tifa says he brought a rabbit skull into the classroom," said a third. "He seemed to think it was funny."

The words _bargain child_ were hissed at them around corners. Most of them were probably referring to the colloquial use of the term, given she'd been anything but married to Cloud's father, even up until he was no longer an issue, but she wouldn't have been surprised if a few of them had meant it literally as well.

"He's only five," Myrun would have liked to say. "He means well. Aren't all children a little bit strange at that age?" But she needed work, and so she held her tongue and kept cleaning.

Sometimes, she still made little jokes to herself, that she _had_ gotten him from a pact with the Fae. It was a nicer alternative than the reality.

He was certainly as wild as one, she would say that much. She'd caught him setting loose the animals caught in their snares on more than one occasion, until she'd drummed it into his head that they needed to eat and that that's where food came from (unless they couldn't catch anything at all, and then what else could you do but either starve or take food from people that had it?). He had taken to wandering off on his own for hours at a time in lieu of playing with any of the other children, and seemed drawn to the mountain in particular. She'd worried herself sick the first couple times, but he always seemed to make it back in one piece. As much as he'd enthusiastically curled up to her in their shared bed, he was cold and surly with nearly everyone else, and seemed to hold a special resentment for the other children. On the rare occasions he spoke of them, it was always with an air of disdain that seemed ill-suited to be coming out of a person that young, and from what she'd been told by his teacher he had a bit of an issue with biting.

He did, at least, seem to understand the concept of playing. She'd also seen him running around the house for hours on end, waving a stick and fighting Wutaians. He'd certainly made up enough friends to keep himself entertained. But perhaps she was imagining the way he'd hesitated before insisting there was no one he'd wanted to invite to his fifth birthday party... not that they'd have much to offer guests anyway.

It had therefore come as a bit of a shock when he'd come home one day, claiming to have made a friend.

She'd been greatly worried about him beforehand -- he'd been vanishing for longer and longer periods of time lately. He seemed to manage alright on his own, but perhaps she really should be keeping a closer eye on him. Maybe one day he'd get it into his head that he really could slay a dragon, or ride one, like the hero in the old stories she'd been telling him lately, and go the same way as her father had. There were all sorts of unpleasant things in the mountains.

He had definitely been up to no good, that much she was sure of. Mr. Katrinsson was claiming someone had robbed him again, and while _she_ hadn't taken anything all that recently, she did know someone else that wouldn't have any qualms about doing so, no matter how hard she'd tried to drum into his head that stealing was for necessity and not just because you wanted something. Then again, to a child, there really wasn't much difference.

He'd been quiet, too, but there was a tension under it she hadn't seen before in him since... well, about a year ago, when every second was an exercise in walking on a neverending field of eggshells, ready for one to break. He was bottling something up. What exactly had he done?

"Who've you made friends with, sweet?" she asked one day as she sat fixing holes in their shoes when he brought it up, quietly dreading the answer.

"He doesn't have a name," said Cloud. "He won't tell me. He's really tall, though. And magic, probably. Really, really magic."

Well, there wasn't anyone that she knew of that fit that description... perhaps he wasn't real? Cloud was still about that age, albeit maybe a little old for that sort of thing.

"It's good you've found an imaginary friend," she said.

“He’s not imaginary,” said Cloud irritably. “He’s real and I met him. He lives in a coffin.”

So _that_ was what he'd been hiding. “You haven’t been playing in that cemetery, have you?” It was bad enough people had set aside an entire plot of land for the express purpose of letting bodies just... rot in the ground. It was probably all kinds of ill fortune to let your child play where corpses were abandoned.

“No," said Cloud. "I didn’t find him in the cemetery. I found him in a basement.”

In a basement? Whose basement? The only house in Nibelheim that had a basement in the first place, as far as she was aware, was the Lockharts', and Cloud was on about as good of terms with Tifa as he was with the rest of the children in the village. Perhaps the basement was made up as well.

“Is he nice?” she asked, trying to pry as gently as she could without him deciding to clam up again.

“No. He keeps telling me to leave," he said, his tone bitter. "I don’t know why he’d like being dead and by himself. He yelled at me about doing magic.”

"What does he look like?" asked Myrun. Telling someone to go away didn't seem like the sort of thing an imaginary friend would do. It rather defeated the purpose of the whole thing, especially if the child in question didn't seem to have in any the first place.

"I'll do a drawing," said Cloud, and sat down in front of their bed (she'd really have to see about getting him his own in a few years, once he was too old to share) and began scribbling furiously. Myrun went back to her washing in the meantime.

She wanted him to make friends. Truly she did. He was already well on his way to winding up a village pariah like her, but how would she explain a concept like that to a five year-old? Then again, maybe he knew it already.

A grubby hand thrusting a sheet of paper in front of her eyes snapped her out of her musing, forcing her to look at the drawing that Cloud had just completed.

It was... worrying. The figure Cloud had drawn was very, very tall and lanky. Most of his body consisted of black scribbles, apart from the red eyes set into its white face. Cloud had given it a mouth full of sharp teeth as well, jutting out of the mouth from all angles. The rest of the page had been coloured in with black as well, perhaps to suggest the basement they were in. The figure had an unfriendly, vaguely malevolent look about its expression.

"That's your friend, sweet?" she said slowly. Maybe she should have been talking to him more, too. Maybe this was another symptom of the problems he'd been having at school.

"Yes. He's dead. He lives outside the town. He's really angry all the time but he never sounds like it."

Myrun frowned. So he was imaginary, then, because that sounded an awful lot like...

She sighed and shook her head. Well, if this is how he wanted to work through it, she wasn't going to stop him.

"...Just be safe, okay?" she said, and returned to sewing up worn leather.

The next day, she was too busy to do much else than work. Wash clothes, drop them off once they'd finished drying, then stop off at the mayor's house to do the cleaning for them. Mrs. Lockhart was always polite enough, but she got the sense that it was more out of pity than any true compassion. Mayor Lockhart was much more up front about his distaste.

"You need to keep that child away from my daughter," he said to her as she was sweeping their kitchen. "He gave her a black eye."

"...Why was she fighting Cloud?" asked Myrun as politely as she could.

"Are you insinuating this was her fault?" asked the mayor sharply.

"No sir," she said, "just trying to get an understanding of what happened before I ask him about it."

"He said something about a man coming out of the mountains and killing them all," said the mayor. "I don't know what kind of stories you peo -- you've been telling him, but that's not the kind of talk we need around the rest of the kids."

"I'll have a talk with him," she said, doing her best to keep her voice calm and contrite. "That's not anything I've ever told him." The mayor "hmph"ed and went back to drinking his coffee.

She _had_ told him some stories about the Fae, and the old gods in the mountain, but this one seemed to be his own invention. Had she been that violent at his age?

Did the boy take after his father?

Not her son. He was a sweet child, really. No one else seemed to notice it. Then again, his father had been as well, offering her money, food, company, telling her how mature she was for her age... had she really been that naive to have believed it? A part of her still felt that he must have loved her, at least a little, even though she knew it was wrong. Maybe he'd used some sort of magic to trick her for three years. Some sort of mind-controlling magic. Did that exist? Was it something innate to him?

She wondered what her own innate magic was like. She'd heard tell her mother had been a powerful mage, but she'd heard that from her father, and drunkards were prone to bending the truth. She prayed Cloud wouldn't take after him, either.

After that, she'd had wood to split, and dinner to prepare, and their own wash basin to scrub out. She almost didn't notice when Cloud suddenly came up from behind her, presumably having finished school.

"Ma?" he asked. She looked over at him and saw his face marred with bruises, and she forced down the spark of anger that had flared up. She'd be complaining to deaf ears if she said anything. She'd have to talk to Cloud about keeping quiet. Surely he hadn't said anything bad enough to warrant this, though...

"What is it, sweet?" she said, scrubbing at a particularly stubborn bit of rust and bracing for their recurring conversation about how stupid the other kids were.

"What's a sin?"

Myrun dropped the sponge she'd been using and swore. He didn't know. Did he? Why was he asking? He couldn't have known.

"Who -- where did you hear that word?" she asked, her heart still hammering in her chest.

"The Pale Man told me it," said Cloud matter-of-factly. "He says we all have to tone for our sins. What's tonement? He said that too."

Myrun's thoughts began racing. He hadn't seen anything, had he? She'd told him not to, had made sure the closet door had not opened -- had gone so far as to leave him inside for three days, was sure he was too young to question the story she'd given him -- he didn't know. He couldn't have, she was just projecting.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, and she realised she'd been staring rather intensely at him this entire time.

"No, you didn't do anything wrong," she said, taking a deep breath. "A sin is... a very bad thing."

Cloud nodded in understanding. "He said I should be careful, and that you should look out for me."

He didn't know, she told herself. He couldn't have known. He didn't know.

Who could have told him? The only other person that knew was...

"I don't think you should be spending so much time around the Pale Man, Cloud," said Myrun. It was crazy, she knew. But what if she was wrong? "He doesn't sound like a happy person."

"He's not. I don't think I ever seen him smile..." said Cloud, then sat back down and began to draw with a thoughtful expression on his face.

He drew the "Pale Man", again and again. Standing there, and then in the school, eating the other children, and then looming behind Cloud and herself, the shadowy figure filling the room and surrounding them.

After Cloud had gone to bed, she'd snatched up that one in particular and burned it over the stove.

She couldn't sleep that night herself, and Cloud seemed restless as well. He would occasionally thrash or mutter in his sleep, fighting something only he could see or hear.

How much of that was her fault, she wondered? And how much did he watch her? She wasn't without her own nightmares -- of his father, of the things she thought might happen to Cloud at school that she wouldn't be able to stop. Sometimes, she even dreamed of Mount Nibel. Sometimes it was simply there in the background, and other times it loomed over everything else. Though it said nothing, it almost seemed to be speaking to her. Beckoning her closer.

It was said that Mount Nibel was the last gauntlet that the dead passed through on the way to the afterlife. She wondered if it was some ill omen, that it seemed to call her as often as it did.

Cloud suddenly sat up, and ear-piercing shriek leaving him as he looked around wildly. She waited for him to realise where he was, but his screaming only intensified as he began to flail his way out of his blankets.

She sighed heavily. The doctor had told her it was normal -- that a lot of children Cloud's age got like this, especially in Nibelheim. There wasn't much she could do for him, other than hold him close and tell him he was alright, waiting for him to recognise her and wake up. He would never talk about what he saw, but she could guess. She wished again, for the millionth time, that his father had been anyone else.

He'd seemed so nice, when they'd first met. Charismatic, in the way that a lot of the men from Shinra were. Some sort of middle manager, out here on some sort of leave. Black hair and dramatic features -- if she hadn't thought it in poor taste to ask, given the war, she'd have said there must have been someone from Wutai in the family tree.

She hadn't thought anything of it that he'd been old enough to be her father, or that he'd convinced her to cut contact with her mother, or that there seemed to be something very ugly in him that showed its face every time she told him no in any capacity...

The gods were punishing her, somehow. She knew it. Filling their dreams with the Pale Man, who haunted their steps from every corner even though he had no right to be in their lives anymore, that she had seen to it herself. It wasn't fair that she should be punished for it. She had protected her son, hadn't she? She had never seem him go for young boys, but she did not want to sit around and wait to see if he took interest in this one in particular, as she became older each day. And if he hadn't taken interest in Cloud... she didn't think that would have gone any better. He hated Cloud, even more than he seemed to hate her, and perhaps one day he would have taken things a bit too far, used a bottle or a belt instead of his hand, and...

Either way, this was her punishment.

There wasn't any work to be done for clients the next day, so instead Myrun turned her gaze to what she could get done around the house. There wasn't a lot to account for, at least. One bed, already made, that she was lying on top of. A sink, empty of the few bowls and plates they owned. The boiler sat off to the side, not requiring coal due to the mako power it and the fridge ran off. The oven was much older, and perhaps could use some more wood...

Myrun was tired, and did not want to get up. She was so very, very tired. She wouldn't be too fussed if there wasn't dinner ready tonight. She wouldn't mind.

Cloud would, though. She had to get up and feed Cloud.

She was tired, though. Maybe he could just feed himself?

She should be keeping a better eye on him, though. Maybe he was getting himself into trouble at school again. At the very least, she could feed him.

She didn't have the energy to make much. Rabbit with wild mushrooms and cornmeal. No berries around this time of year. No money for new shoes, which Cloud needed now that he'd outgrown them two months ago. After dinner was over, she lifted up one of the floorboards and checked to see how much she'd saved. Not enough for shoes, at least. Not until her next job.

She entertained herself, as she worked over the next couple months, with the idea that someone important from Shinra might stop by -- that they'd offer her ten thousand gil an hour to clean the president's desk, and she'd sell out and take Cloud with her and have a house up on the plate. They'd wear clothes that fit, simply buy dinner when she didn't have the energy to make it, and they'd sit together over meals without the pervasive feeling of dread lurking around the table because, despite the fact that she tried to hide it, Cloud was aware on some level that he was eating all her money.

It was a nice dream.

One day, just before putting Cloud to bed, she retrieved two one gil coins and replaced the floorboard, and gestured for him to come near.

"Tomorrow, you can take these to the store and buy anything you like," she said, putting them gently into his hand. Cloud swallowed and nodded solemnly, climbing onto his side of the bed and stuffing the coins into his pillowcase. She sighed and wondered what she'd do in ten years when he'd want a bed of his own.

She dreamt that night that she was still awake -- that she'd gone about her business as usual, gotten ready for bed, and found _him_ sitting there next to Cloud, brushing his hair. He always did it wrong -- didn't seem to have any understanding of how hair, or brushes, or heads worked, jabbing the teeth of the brush into the snarls on Cloud's head before yanking and yanking until the hair snapped, eliciting a scream from him. Cloud was asking him to stop -- it hurts, stop it, it hurts -- and _he_ just kept screaming right back, saying that if he just combed it himself like he was supposed to, it wouldn't be this fucking difficult, would it? And Myrun had given up arguing with him, had learned that that only made things more difficult, and so she sat and waited until he'd stopped, had gone out for a walk, and would do her best to smooth it out properly, and telling him that she was sorry, so sorry, so sorry. He was only three, should still have some semblance of baby fat on him. She'd known there would be no way she'd be able to feed him, he was doomed before he was born. He'd grown cold in her arms, and his eyes had become glassy and still, and only the faintest little movements from his chest told her that he was alive at all.

A hand closed around his neck and squeezed, and with a quiet little crunch he went still. Myrun looked up to see _him_ standing there. Tall and dark-haired and gaunt, his remaining eye cold, as the chunk she'd carved out of his head with the hatchet had claimed the other.

"We all have to atone for our sins, Myrun," he said, casting their son aside and advancing on her. "Cloud likes me more than he likes you. He told me that."

"You're dead," she croaked.

"Cloud found out about me," he drawled. "He found out, and we're such good friends now. He knows what a little whore you are. A murdering little jailbait whore. He knows everything." She felt herself slip on something -- one of Cloud's drawings of the Pale Man, always there in the shadows of their house -- and she fell hard on her back. The floor was covered in them.

"I offered you the world," he said, leaning in close. Too close. He was too close, she hadn't said no, how could she -- "I offered you the world and you went and got yourself knocked up to chain me here. But if he's out of the way -- and _you're_ out of the way --"

His hand closed around her throat.

"-- I don't think the world would even remember you were gone."

Myrun's eyes snapped open with a gasp to an empty room filled with late afternoon light. He wasn't here. He wasn't...

Neither was Cloud.

Her hand flew to the empty half of the bed before she realised the noise that had woken her had been a steady knocking sound on her door. She hastily pulled her shoes on and answered the door to find a cross-looking woman scowling at her. She recognised her -- the mother of one of Cloud's classmates. Her heart immediately sank.

"Where's --"

"Finally decided to wake up, have you?" she said, scowling. "Come collect your brat of a child."

"Is he okay?" she breathed, scrambling for her shoes.

"He tried to steal from the general store and took a chunk out of my son's arm," spat the woman.

"...He what?" Surely he knew not to take anything he didn't need, especially while the store was open. "But... but I gave him money."

"That's what he says," she huffed. "I know I didn't give any to Argos. But that doesn't change the fact that he's violent and unruly because _you_ never discipline him."

"I -- yes, I'll... I'll go talk to him," she muttered. She spared another glance over her shoulder, and was met only with the empty washtub she kept in the corner.

Mr. Katrinsson, the store's owner, was standing there waiting for her as she approached the store.

"About damn time," he muttered. "Been trying to find you for two hours. Get a bloody phone."

"Where's my son? Is he alright? I --"

"He was caught stealing," said Mr. Katrinsson curtly. "Something you've been encouraging, no doubt."

"He wouldn't have any reason to do that," she said, taking a deep breath. She needed to remain in the good graces of these people. They had money. She needed their money. "I gave him two gil before he came here."

"I'm sure that's what you told him to --"

"I didn't give Argos any money," said the woman that had fetched her. Mr. Katrinsson's face went carefully blank. "I'll be certain to have a talk with my son about stealing, of course."

"Of course, Mrs. Mosasdottir," said Mr. Katrinsson with a simpering smile. He immediately rounded on Myrun again.

"He also," continued the store owner, "assaulted another child. I hope for your sakes' he's had all his shots. Blood everywhere. Threatened to kill him. I do not want the little rat anywhere near the premises anymore, is that clear? He's trouble waiting to happen."

"...Where is he?" she said, too tired to argue. She'd just woken up. How was she this tired already?

"Boy needs a good switching," was all he grumbled before disappearing into the shop. She watched him drag him out from behind the counter by the arm, lecturing him the whole way.

"I have explained the situation to your mother," said Mr. Katrinsson. "Your money will be returned to you. But this boy is not to set foot in my store, woman. He's caused enough trouble for everyone in this town as it is."

Cloud took one look at Myrun, his face streaked with dried tears, and immediately rushed to bury his face in her dress. She knelt and let him dig his fingers into the fabric, combing her fingers through the back of his hair. Must have worked himself into a lather over the whole incident. That she could just go in and buy him something herself...

She rose to address the owner. "Mr. Katrinsson, I assure you that --"

"Don't lie to me, woman, I know you put him up to it. You're lucky I don't call the police on both of you. Why don't you earn an honest living like the rest of us, eh?"

And she'd simply nodded, because what could she have possibly said? She'd have to wait until they got home for anyone to be around that could listen. Even if he couldn't appreciate why.

"I'm sorry I got you in trouble," said Cloud after a moment. "I really en't take anything this time."

"It's alright. I'm making a little more money now, so we'll be okay for a while," she said tiredly. "...The manager said you threatened to kill that boy, though."

"I didn't. I said the Pale Man would rip him to pieces. That's how he died, you know. I'm gonna get him to come kill them both -- him and that dumb baby what always follows him around."

Myrun froze. She had to stop and remind herself that it was just a dream -- that it wasn't real, that it couldn't matter, that Cloud would still love her even if...

She knelt to address Cloud directly, doing her best to keep her voice calm. "You can't say things like that to people. It's not nice."

"He said bad things about you," said Cloud. "I oughta get the Pale Man to kill his mama too."

"Listen, Cloud," said Myrun sharply. _I will not look behind me,_ she told herself. _There is nothing there._ "He's imaginary. He won't be killing anyone. And you need to stop talking to him."

"But..."

"You won't be talking with him anymore, Cloud. Find a new friend. You're getting a bit old for imaginary ones anyway."

"He's real, Ma!" Cloud objected. "He's real, and he --"

"I said that's enough!" She let go of Cloud's hand after realising she was probably squeezing the circulation out of it and found her own hands were trembling.

Cloud swallowed and nodded, and neither one of them spoke for the rest of the walk. That night, she clutched him to her like she had when he was small, and she sang him a song that she had already sung a thousand times. One of the old stories, about debt to the mountains, paid in blood -- of the child pacted by the ones sleeping there. She'd never listened to the words before, but now as she sang them a strange ache sprang up in her chest, and she clutched him all the more tightly to herself.

When the world moved on, it buried the mountain, and it buried the Pale Man, and the songs, and the town, and the child in her arms, and then it buried Myrun. No one remembered.

**Author's Note:**

> please go read the number i if you haven't i swear it's better than this


End file.
